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Kyrie parked in front of the restaurant and got out of her car, shivering at the sight of the facade, at its cheery sign saying three luck dragon above another sign that proclaimed for your health, we don't use msg in our cooking.

Kyrie pulled her coat tighter around herself. She had very bad memories of this parking lot. Without meaning to, she looked toward the sky, afraid of a flapping of large wings, the sudden appearance of the Great Sky Dragon in all his golden and green glory. But the skies were empty and a sound somewhere between throat-clearing and a cough made her turn to look.

In the slightly open door of the restaurant, stood a middle-aged Asian gentleman, with impeccably cut salt-and-pepper hair and a big white apron. She took a deep breath. Three steps brought her close to him, and she had a moment of surprise, at noticing that he was wearing a shirt and tie under his apron.

"Ms. Smith?" he said, extending his hand.

She hesitated only fractionally before she shook it. It felt slightly cool to the touch. Not abnormally so. It was the same way Tom's skin usually felt, as if he'd been holding a glass with a cold drink all the time. Maybe it was something about the metabolism of dragon shifters, though Kyrie would bet the dragons were not actually cold-blooded.

The man held the door open to her. "Please come in."

He led her past the counter, manned by a small lady who was watching TV and doing accounts at the same time, then past the dining room where only three people sat at tables, and into a door that led into busy, noisy kitchen. Before she had more than a moment to recoil from the sound of pans banged together, the clash of plates, the way people yelled at each other across the room, she felt Mr. Lung's cool hand on her elbow, and saw him pointing at yet another, narrower door.

She went through it to find herself in a very small room. There was only one table, long and narrow, covered in an immaculate white tablecloth. Three chairs, one on either of the longer sides of the table, and one at the end. At one corner of the table, the tablecloth had been pulled back, to reveal a cutting-board surface. That area was covered in cabbage and there was a cleaver amid it. On the other side sat a pile of papers that looked like account books, but which Kyrie could not presume to decipher, given they were written in Chinese ideograms.

Mr. Lung smiled and waved her to one of the chairs on the long side of the table, then sat himself on the facing one and took up the cleaver. "I hope you don't mind," he said, "if I work while we talk? I find it helps me concentrate. Also, we are a family operation. I don't cook, but I help with the preparation for the cooking. And then I take off the apron and serve at tables." Judging from his smile, one would think this was a pleasant social chat.

"You . . . know my name . . ." Kyrie said.

"Of course," he said, equably. "We met before. I mean, I've seen you. And I knew who you were. I was not . . . in my human form."

Kyrie thought of the assembly of dragons, of the Great Sky Dragon and of Tom—as she then thought—getting killed. She felt as if her throat would close.

Mr. Lung seemed to notice her discomfort. He set the cleaver down again, amid the chopped cabbage, gently, as if he were afraid the blade might scare her. "I know what it must have seemed like to you," he said. He joined his hands and rested them on the edge of the table, but kept his spotless shirt sleeves away from the cabbage. "But even then, I knew . . ." He shrugged. "He doesn't tell us much. He doesn't need to. He's like . . . the father of the family, and the father doesn't owe explanations to anyone, does he?" He smiled suddenly. "Well, now your attitudes here are different, but where I grew up the father could do as he pleased and didn't need to tell wife or children anything." For a moment it seemed to Kyrie as though he glanced across endless distances at a time she couldn't even imagine. "But we don't question him, and I haven't. I do have my suspicions, but I'm not so foolish as to share them, and besides, I might be quite wrong. But I can tell you he didn't mean to seriously punish the young dragon. If he had . . ." Mr. Lung shrugged.

He picked up the cleaver again, and resumed chopping cabbage. "If he had, you wouldn't be worried for the young dragon now, because he would be dead. Himself can be quite ruthless when he chooses. I don't think he has it in him to mind what other people feel or think." He shrugged again. "But he treated the young dragon very gently, particularly for someone who had just led him on a chase and defied him the way—what is his name? Mr. Ormson?—had."

Kyrie heard herself sniffle skeptically. "He had given people orders to kill him before."

Mr. Lung narrowed his eyes at her. "This is where I can't give you more detailed explanations, Ms. Smith. Partly, because they are only my conjectures. But I think . . . I think Himself found out something about Mr. Ormson when he met him in the flesh. And that's when he decided he could not kill him."

"Found out what?"

Mr. Lung shrugged. "I can't tell you that. All I can say is that the dragon triad looks after its own."

"But he's not . . . an Asian dragon."

"Sometimes the differences are smaller than you think," Mr. Lung said. "And not everything is as black and white as it appears. For now . . ." He chopped cabbage with a will. "Let's establish that it matters to Himself—in fact, it's important to him—that nothing should happen to the young dragon. So, anything I can do to help you with this . . ."

"He'll never join you, you know?" Kyrie felt forced to warn. "He just can't. He would . . . he will never give anyone that sort of authority over him."

Mr. Lung nodded. "I talked to his father," he said, as if he were admitting to a distasteful encounter. "I know all about Mr. Ormson's hatred of authority. All I can say is that he's very young."

Kyrie opened her mouth and almost said it wasn't the authority, it was the feeling of belonging absolutely to someone, and the fact that the triad was, after all, a criminal organization. But she realized in time that nothing could be gained from antagonizing the people she needed to help her, and almost smiled. It would be such a Tom thing to do, after all. Perhaps Tom was contagious. Instead, she closed her mouth. And when she opened it again, it was to say, "There's a dire wolf shifter in town."

"Ah, the executioner. We've . . . heard." The nimble fingers plied the cleaver impossibly fast, chopping exact, neat strips of cabbage. "We have . . . a pact with the Ancient Ones."

"I know. I don't know if Dante Dire intends to violate it," she said. And watched his eyebrows go up, as the cleaver stopped.

"What do you mean 'violate it'?" For just a moment, Mr. Lung's urbane mask seemed to slip. He set his mouth into what would have been a grin, except that it displayed far more of his small, sharp teeth than any natural grin could display. "He wouldn't dare."

Kyrie could swear she saw an extra pair of nictitating eyelids close, then open from the side, but she knew it couldn't be true. She looked away from him, hastily. "I don't know," she said. "I know the following: he's a sadist. He's not as much in control of himself as he thinks he is. He seems to have decided he likes me, or at least is not willing to hurt me, for now. And he's looking for a scapegoat for the deaths that brought him here."

"He should be more concerned," the dragon said, "with the other deaths. The ones that originally got you involved."

"Yes," Kyrie said. "But he doesn't seem concerned with searching out the true culprits or investigating anything. He wants to protect himself, and get out of here with his . . . reputation undiminished." Mentally she added to herself that at least she hoped he wanted to get out of there. The idea that he had a thing for her and that he might stick around to make himself agreeable to her was driving her insane. In the long list of suitors she'd rejected, Dante Dire was something she'd never met. Something she didn't need.

She started telling the dragon about her encounters with Dire and more, about what she sensed and feared from the creature. When she was done, Mr. Lung swept the cabbage into a mound, and looked at her over it. "So, you fear he might inadvertently kill the young dragon? While baiting him?" He looked skeptical. "We are not that frail, Ms. Smith. Nor that easy to kill."

"No," she said. "That is not what I fear at all. What I fear . . ." She shook her head. "You know Tom, such as he is." She smiled a little. "Hatred of authority and all, he insists on looking after those he thinks he's obliged to protect. To . . . to keep them from harm. As such, he's . . . well . . . he doesn't want me hurt. And he doesn't want Rafiel hurt, nor Keith, nor anyone in the diner. That girl reporter getting killed just outside the diner scared him. He thinks it's up to him to save us all. And I'm very afraid he's about to do something stupid."

Mr. Lung was quiet a long time. When he spoke, it was in measured tones. "I would say he will do something stupid. That sense that he must do something he's completely unprepared to do . . . I've seen it before. He will get hurt."

"Yes," Kyrie said, feeling a great wave of relief at being understood. "That's what I thought. He will get hurt."

"No," Mr. Lung said, with great decision, his face setting suddenly in sharp lines and angles. "No. Himself would not want him hurt. I will do what it takes. What is your plan?"

 

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Framed